


yeah, things were simpler then

by kismetNemesis



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, First Kiss, Getting Together, Other, Secret Samol 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 09:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13164156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kismetNemesis/pseuds/kismetNemesis
Summary: Fourteen and Tender's relationship changes over their various iterations.A 2017 Secret Samol gift for ehetja on twitter!





	yeah, things were simpler then

**Author's Note:**

> A 2017 Secret Samol gift for ehetja on twitter! They wanted Fourteen and Tender's relationship changing over iterations, and they said Tender was their favorite, so I did my best to deliver! Warning: spoilers for literally right up to episode 25.

[the body before]

Fourteen carried themselves like they thought they were dangerous. Still, that trademark insecurity hovered in the margins of their every action - like they were a gun who didn’t know if their safety was off or not.

They had dark skin, long braided hair, and a tooth gap that had charmed Tender the first time she saw them smile. They were a cobbler in their spare time, and always wore long boots that changed color scale by scale. 

The three of them sat in the living room of the Beloved ship, waiting for Cascara to arrive and brief them on a new mission. They never just hung out, the three of them, so Tender supposed this was the closest she was going to get. Signet was reading, but Fourteen was just staring at the tilework, looking lost.

“Hey, Fourteen.” They snapped to attention.

“Tender.”

“Are you, like, good? You feeling up to this? Could be dangerous. Deadly, maybe.” Tender tilted her head and flicked her ears. They scoffed.

“This is what I do.” 

“It’s what we all do, right?” 

Fourteen laughed like that was ridiculous.

“Listen, Fourteen.” Tender scooted a little closer to them on the couch. “Do you wanna get drinks after this?” Their eyes widened, but they didn’t speak. “Like, I feel like we don’t know each other at all.”

“I’m flattered, Tender, but-”

“No, not-”

“No, yeah, I understand. It’s just that I want to stay professional.” They rubbed thoughtfully at their dark stubble. “I’ve had this go badly lots of times in the past. Too many to count.” 

Tender sighed. She knew a rejection when she heard one. She turned away from them in a huff, tail flicking involuntarily. She caught Signet’s gaze and rolled her eyes at her raised eyebrow.

Mercifully, Cascara rolled in, looking resplendent in a green dress. Cascara was really more of her type, Tender thought spitefully. Actually expressive. Communicative. Wore cute dresses. 

“I can talk to them, if you like.” 

After the briefing, Signet had caught Tender’s arm and pulled her into the kitchen. Tender snorted.

“To who? Fourteen?”

“I know rejection can hurt, and I’m interested in maintaining team harmony.”

“I wasn’t even asking them out!”

“No one said you were.” Signet had this infuriating aura of calm and poise that made Tender want to rip a hole in her perfect robes. She might’ve, if Signet didn’t also always look so tired. 

“It’s fine,” Tender sighed. “We’ll live.”

But Fourteen didn’t.

[the gunslinger]

“Tender, don’t be mad.”

The two of them were at the Steady. Patrons nodded at Tender where they saw her at the bar, and tried to hide confusion at Fourteen’s presence. _Who is that_ , Tender heard someone mutter. Tender wasn’t sure she knew herself.

“You can just die and come back and you didn’t tell us.”

“Cascara knew,” they said helplessly. God, they were suddenly so tall. They were dressing differently, too, as if to rub it in. Tender barely resisted the urge to knock their drink off the bar. 

“You can’t do this and expect everything to be the same.”

“I. I don’t.” Fourteen reached over and carefully took one of her hands in theirs. “Tender? I’m sorry.”

Against all odds, Tender found some kind of comfort in their new face. Perhaps it was their sheer contrition, perhaps it was how much older and more world-weary they looked. She closed her eyes. 

“Tender.” Tender didn’t move. “Let’s have a meeting place, okay? For when - if - I die again.”

“I-” Tender bit back something like _that wasn’t what I wanted_ , but she wasn’t sure what she _did_ want. 

This was them giving her something, at least. She opened her eyes to see theirs still fixed on hers. 

“There’s a tea shop near my apartment,” she offered. “Do you still like tea?” 

They laughed. “I’m not really sure.”

“I’m still mad.”

“That’s fine.” 

This Fourteen seemed willing to get much closer to her, something they proved again and again over the next few months. Tender wondered if Signet had actually talked to them, or if this was a result of the new body, but she had to admit she liked it. The whole gunslinger schtick was dorky, but still kind of charming. 

Besides, Tender saw them reach for their gun whenever they were startled, too much of a muscle memory to be completely an affectation. They must have done that in their old body, too, though Tender had never caught them doing it. 

Sometimes they would snort derisively like the cowboy they looked like. Sometimes they would giggle in a way Tender would not have been able to imagine this body giggling. Often they would lay a hand on her shoulder protectively; a few times they nearly tried to take a bullet for her. They never let her out of their sight.

_They feel like they owe me something,_ Tender realized. 

Though Tender tried to keep her memory sharp, one day she and Fourteen were having lunch and she realized she could barely remember their first face at all. 

This one - grizzled, gray, dangerous, goofy, protective - this one was the Fourteen Fifteen Tender truly knew. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if they stayed like this. 

_I’ll take whatever they are offering._

[worthy of grace]

They were suddenly stunning, in any sense of the word.

When they rejected the tea shop as a meeting place, Tender’s heart nearly stopped, and when they sat down next to her at the hotel and asked if she wanted their autograph, her heart had nearly stopped again, for a very different reason. This was a new Fourteen Fifteen. This was Worthy of Grace.

The wildest thing was that Tender had heard of them, watched their one super-popular MV with the masks and the pyrotechnics in the middle of a slime video binging session. Tender distinctly remembered thinking “hot,” before getting distracted by butter slime. It brought up lots of questions about how their whole body thing worked, which she might’ve asked if she hadn’t been feeling so weird that month.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of them like this before. It was that they had almost certainly been flirting with her at the hotel, and that they sent her tickets to their shows. They’d gone out to dinner like they’d done many times before, but this time Fourteen had smirked and touched her hand and let her use her cache to pay, something the gunslinger had never done. Worthy was shorter than their previous two bodies, and yet Tender sometimes felt she was shrinking when she saw them onstage or when they smirked at her or tucked their hair behind their ear. 

The shuttle ride to the Privign mission brought all the unspoken tension to a place that Tender could hardly bear. They were fucking with her, she knew it. Acting like she was a fan, not a friend, like they were having some overpowering effect on her.

“We just click,” they said, and _winked_.

Maybe they were having some kind of effect.

“I didn’t make a mistake.” Tender couldn’t stop herself from spitting the words. “I’m not like them, Fourteen. I’m not some lovestruck fan writing you letters. I know you.”

“You know me.”

“I knew you? No, I know you. I do. You’re still Fourteen, even if you look different and act different. You don’t act that different. Mostly you just hit on me more!” Tender watched their eyes widen and their cheeks blush with a thrill of victory.

“Is that... a problem?”

They were expressive, communicative; they were wearing a very cute dress. 

“It’s fine.”

They bit their lip and pressed a thumbnail into the pad of their index finger, that familiar insecurity. 

“Just fine?” They stood up and took two steps closer. “I can’t promise... I forget things, Tender, I lose time.”

Tender took her own step forward. 

“You feel a pull to me. Don’t bullshit me. I know it.” Tender reached for their face. “It’s more than fine. If you lose time, let’s not _waste_ any-”

They cut her off with a kiss. Tender felt like her chest was a molten ball of iron. 

“Wow, finally.”

“Been waiting a long time, Tender?”

“Shut up,” said Tender, kissing them again. They sighed into the kiss, and Tender was just thinking about backing them up against a wall when the landing chimes sounded.

“We’ll put a pin in this, yeah?” Fourteen winked and began reapplying their lipstick. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll remember.”

[the body politic]

Tender wondered whether they had forgotten her.

Of course, it was no more likely that they’d forgotten her between Worthy of Grace and whoever they were now than between the gunslinger and Worthy of Grace, but still. They were sitting across from her at the briefing from the Rapid Evening agent. They were blonde now, and compact, not to mention the _horns..._ whatever, she was just glad they were alive.

Still, they weren’t looking at her, or texting her, or anything. She supposed the whole world was going to hell, all thanks to Open, of course, but she still spent the whole speech on edge.

When it was over, she stepped out of the room for a moment to wash her face and try to fix her hair, and to her relief the door to the bathroom whooshed open behind her.

“Hey. Don’t leave my sight.”

Tender resented the rush of warmth in her stomach. She could see them in the mirror, pressing their thumbnail into their finger.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she shot back, finally turning around. They stepped forward and caught her hands in theirs.

“It doesn’t go well, is all.”

Tender thought back to her panic at Worthy’s death, the anxiety of waiting for them to send word once the communications had cleared. 

“You’re right. We should stick together, from now on.”

“You said I felt a pull.” Tender could see Fourteen swallow. “Well, you were right. But the reason... well, it doesn’t matter now.” They kissed her, slower and sweeter than Worthy. “I’ve had this go badly before. But I think we can make this go well.”

Tender pressed her forehead into Fourteen’s and let out a long sigh. They matched it, pulled her into a hug so good this body seemed made for it. 

“It might take a miracle. But here’s hoping.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so happy I got the chance to write Tender/Fourteen! I basically died re-listening to their conversations for research, LMAO. Please leave a comment if you enjoyed it!


End file.
